Watch Dogs

Uplay members can get Ubisoft's 2014 open-world hacker-thriller Watch Dogs free on PC, starting tomorrow.

Assassin's Creed Origins has confirmed, once and for all, it takes place in the same shared universe as fellow Ubisoft series Watch Dogs.

The theory both series are connected is not new. Ubisoft has played with the idea before, and slipped references to each into the others' games.

Assassin's Creed Easter eggs feature in both Watch Dogs 1 and 2, while Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag includes mention of Watch Dogs' fictional evil corporation Blume.

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June's Xbox Live Games with Gold offering includes the original Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed 3 and Dragon Age: Origins.

Despite all the excitement that built up before its release, I think it's fair to say that Watch Dogs was a bit of a disappointment. What once seemed like such a promising game was marred by dull gameplay, an unlikable protagonist and some underwhelming hacking mechanics.

Ubisoft has confirmed that a second Watch Dogs title will be out before 31st March 2017.

There's an impressive new Watch Dogs mod for Grand Theft Auto 5 which replicates the technology-tampering gameplay from Ubisoft's open world hackathon - and surpasses it.

Watch Dogs 2 appears to be in development, according to the LinkedIn profile of an Ubisoft senior gameplay programmer.

UPDATE 20/2/15 2.40pm: Microsoft has added a handful of extra deals to its Ultimate Game Sale which will only be available over this weekend.

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs sequel must improve the fledgling series' formula and appeal to fans "in a new way", its creative director has said.

Disney's all-conquering animated movie Frozen was the UK's best-selling entertainment product of 2014.

Some might suggest that it's the end of an era. While Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have continued to receive conversions (of varying quality) of the majority of the recent AAA hits, Nintendo's Wii U has clearly missed out this season, with Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty, Destiny and many others conspicuous by their absence. Delayed for six months, Watch Dogs could well be the last major multi-platform release the console sees - Ubisoft itself declaring that it's the last mature title it's willing to bring to Wii U. Going into the game, initial buzz on the internet seemed positive, with talk of the game sitting between the last-gen and PS4/Xbox One versions - right where you'd hope it would be, given the capabilities of the more modern Nintendo hardware.

Ubisoft has "sold in" - i.e. shipped to retailers - 9 million copies of its hacky open-world adventure Watch Dogs, the publisher announced in its latest earnings report.

Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond has left Ubisoft after over a decade of service.

Watch Dogs' impending Wii U release won't include the Bad Blood DLC that just launched for Season Pass holders and is due for everyone else on 30th September.

It's been four months since Watch Dogs sold a ton of copies and earned itself Yves Guillemot's rubber stamp of franchise status. The debate of how well the game delivered on its lofty pre-release expectations now feels long worn out but, having stuck through the game's story until the very end, do indulge me a quick opinion here. I think I've earned it.

Hacky open-world adventure Watch Dogs is coming to Wii U, finally, on 21st November in the UK, Ubisoft has announced.

North Americans will receive it three days earlier on the 18th.

This port is being developed by Ubisoft Bucharest, in collaboration with the game's primary developer, Ubisoft Montreal. The Wii U version of Watch Dogs will allow players to use the GamePad as a map, or for Off-TV Play.

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Watch Dogs gets its first dollop of DLC this month, in the shape of single-player story expansion Bad Blood. It'll be available from 23 September for posh people with a season pass. Those in the cheap seats must wait for 30 September.

The story finds Rob Zombie lookalike T-Bone, arguably the only interesting and fun character in the game, taking centre stage as he takes on the sinister Blume Corporation. Will he be joined by his army of giant robot dinosaur booby traps? The trailer shows him getting up to mischief with an exploding remote controlled roller skate called Eugene, so we can only hope.

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Ubisoft has issued a new update for Watch Dogs which adds the ability to hack your friends.

Previously you could only be paired with a random stranger during the game's Online Hacking and Online Tailing missions. Now you'll have the option to specifically select a friend and enter their game without their knowledge.

Those who have trolls for friends can disable the feature in the game's settings, Ubisoft has reassured.

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Watch Dogs will be Ubisoft's final mature Wii U game for the foreseeable future, company boss Yves Guillemot has said.

Hey smilin' strange, Watch Dogs will be getting DLC based in New Jersey.

Ubisoft's open-world techno-thriller Watch Dogs received a lot of criticism as its final release, while pretty, didn't quite live up to the early promo footage demonstrated at its E3 2012 reveal.

Watch Dogs has sold-in over 8 million units, Ubisoft announced today in its quarterly financial report.

Ubisoft's open-world hacking adventure Watch Dogs is getting all new single-player DLC tomorrow on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Ubisoft has issued an explanation for why the PC version of Watch Dogs includes unused graphical options within its files.

Ubisoft has detailed a major patch for Watch Dogs that is now rolling out across all platforms.

The update will "reconstruct" any save files corrupted by the game's loading bug, which has left some users unable to boot the game at all. Despite the fix, some collectibles "may remain unrecoverable", Ubisoft explained on the game's official forum.

Several mission-breaking bugs have also been squashed, while connection and session joining issues for Watch Dogs' online modes have also been improved.

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May's US hardware sales have once again seen PlayStation 4 crowned king - for the fifth month straight.

It was our first taste of next-gen. Watch Dogs' brilliant E3 2012 reveal demonstrated a new level of open-world gameplay - a stunning simulation of Chicago, where the ability to hack smartphones and infrastructure hinted at previously impossible levels of interactivity, rendered with visual fidelity that wasn't achievable on the hardware of the time. This was Ubisoft's vision for the future of gaming.

Ubisoft has extended its partnership with graphics company Nvidia to cover all of its major upcoming releases.

UPDATE 5/6/14 11.25am: Ubisoft has told Eurogamer that the bug blocking some users from booting Watch Dogs is not related to uPlay rewards.

Watch Dogs sold more than 4m copies in its first week on sale, publisher Ubisoft has trumpeted.

The game is Ubisoft's biggest ever launch and the biggest new game IP to ever launch in the US. It's also the biggest new game IP to launch in the UK, as we reported yesterday.

Meanwhile, Watch Dogs' freebie companion app, ctOS Mobile, has been downloaded by more than a million people.

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Remember all the hoo-hah last year about Kinect security? Potential Xbox One customers were, perhaps understandably, a little concerned about installing an HD camera in their homes that pointed directly at them whenever they sat on their sofa and that listened to everything they said.

Ubisoft has crossed over one of its Assassin's Creed characters into Watch Dogs, making him the focus of a side mission in the newly released game.

Watch Dogs has stormed to the top of the UK all-format charts and earned itself the biggest launch week of any new IP in the UK ever, beating previous record holder LA Noire's haul by more than half its sales again.

The open-world hackathon is Ubisoft's biggest ever game launch in the UK. Watch Dogs beat the publisher's previous peak for launch week sales - set in 2012 by Assassin's Creed 3 - by more than 17 per cent.

Overall, Watch Dogs is the 17th biggest game launch in the UK of all time. Only games from four established franchises - GTA, FIFA, Call of Duty and Battlefield - have ever sold more.

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Built from the ground up with the new generation of gaming hardware in mind, it's easy to forget that Ubisoft Montreal's new open-world cyber-thriller is actually a cross-generational release, also available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Multi-platform titles are necessarily built with scalability in mind - it's essential for the PC gaming market - but the question we're interested in today is whether Watch Dogs is a sign that we're finally at breaking point. Should last-gen hardware be left behind by AAA developers? Or does less-capable hardware still offers a viable alternative?

To get to the heart of the matter, we have the PS3 version to compare with Watch Dogs' PlayStation 4 release, the technical strengths of which we've already covered in detail. The Disrupt engine benefits from the newer Sony console's processing power to handle the AI and physics elements of a vast Chicago city sandbox - all delivered at 1600x900 and backed by a stable 30fps. Meanwhile, on PS3 it's fair to say the core mechanics hold together faithfully enough, with all abilities, missions and areas transferring unscathed, but the gloss over the top is significantly pared back and the resulting visuals can be startlingly different at times.

In terms of the base image, PS3 pushes out a native resolution of around 1152x648, reinforced by what appears to be an FXAA solution for edge treatment - the weakest option on PC. But as you can see from our head-to-head video below (and the Watch Dogs PS3 vs PS4 comparison gallery), this is far from the biggest issue with the game's visual make-up.

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Like many people - judging by Ubisoft's declaration of record day-one sales - I have spent the last few days driving around Watch Dogs' next-gen vision of Chicago, raising and lowering bollards and searching in vain for something to wear that doesn't make me look like Neo in chunky knit. I've had some fun but, as is often the case, I think the things I've most enjoyed have been the incidental details. No, not Aiden Pearce's "iconic cap", but things like the billboard signs hacked to show internet memes, or the snatches of stolen SMS traffic thrown up by Aiden's profiler. "I'm doing vaginas tonight... Oh crap! Fajitas! Fajitas!"

Booting up Watch Dogs on Xbox One directly after a PlayStation 4 play session is a surprisingly pleasant experience. 792p? Really? The introductory engine-driven cut-scenes - along with many other in-engine sequences - are a remarkably close match, not only with the PS4 version, but with the PC release running at full 1080p. Moving into gameplay, the difference becomes more evident, but one thing to make clear from the off is that the emphasis in Watch Dogs' presentation is on lighting and effects and how they interact with materials, and this kind of emphasis remains flattering despite the difference in resolution. Titanfall - another 792p title - didn't compare well to its higher-resolution equivalent, but Watch Dogs on Xbox One gets away with it.

If there's one word to sum up the advantage that PS4 Watch Dogs has over its Xbox One equivalent, it's refinement. Reduced aliasing here, less frequent screen-tear there - the impression you get is of a game that fundamentally offers the same package but feels a little more polished and solid on the Sony platform. Obviously, given the choice we'd take the extra refinement, but Xbox One owners can still buy Watch Dogs safe in the knowledge that Ubisoft Montreal's gameplay vision is delivered intact.

On PC, the story isn't quite so rosy. Despite the release of drivers from AMD and Nvidia apparently optimised for the game, we cannot find any way of playing this game at maximum settings without some off-putting performance issues. We've tried GTX 780s in SLI, Radeon R9 290X, GTX 780 Ti and even the 6GB GTX Titan, all of them backed up by a six-core Intel i7 3930K - a level of CPU power that significantly exceeds the recommended spec. In all cases, there are frame-rate and consistency issues that need to be resolved, and a particular rethink is required in the way that AMD graphics hardware handles this game.

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It's not just the PC version of Watch Dogs that's struggling - the console versions are having trouble, too.

An ill-advised PR campaign for Watch Dogs resulted in a bomb squad storming the offices of Australian publication Ninemsn.

Ubisoft has been promoting Watch Dogs rather heavily for the past two years and it looks like that effort finally paid off as the hacky open-world adventure has sold more copies in its first 24 hours than any title in Ubisoft history.

Ubisoft's new open-world hacking-based adventure Watch Dogs is suffering its own encryption-based foibles as at least hundreds of players - and presumably more - are unable to access the game on PC due to authentication errors on Uplay.

Pre-launch, Ubisoft Montreal confirmed Watch Dogs would operate at different resolutions on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The PS4 operates at a straight 900p, while the peculiar '792p' - first seen in Titanfall - is the resolution of choice for the Xbox One version of the game. But what other differences set the two releases apart? And do they each play just as well as each other?

While we've had access to the PS4 and PC editions of Watch Dogs for a few days, access to Xbox One code has been non-existent, so we got our hands on the game at the same time as everyone else, buying it from the Xbox Store on the stroke of midnight on release day. We're currently working on a much more extensive analysis, but we thought we'd share some initial findings with you ahead of time.

Let's kick off with some initial observations on image quality. Generally speaking, intricate texture detail and high-contrast edges aren't the most obvious elements of Watch Dogs' visual make-up, so the good news is that despite lacking a full 1080p framebuffer, the PS4 edition remains a very handsome-looking game compared to the PC release running at maximum settings. The surprise is how close the pared-down Xbox One game compares; after Titanfall's aliasing issues, we had concerns about Watch Dogs' visual presentation, but it manages to acquit itself rather well overall, as the shots below should demonstrate.

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How many dogs watch a Watch Dogs dog if a Watch Dogs does watch dogs? It's the question on everyone's lips today, probably, and we're keen to help you answer it, which is why Ian is going to be live-streaming Ubisoft's new open-world action game three times this afternoon so you can dip in and see whether it's the sort of thing you might enjoy.

"Hacking is your weapon" declares the advertising for Ubisoft's latest franchise-starter, but after more than 30 hours of gameplay it's fair to say that my body count from assault rifles, grenade launchers and stealth kills is far more impressive than anything I can credit to my hacking skills. This is a game about hacking in which hacking very quickly becomes an abstract background.

Instead, Watch Dogs is an often gorgeous, solidly satisfying and efficiently structured run through familiar gameplay motifs: part open-world sandbox, part third-person shooter, part stealth game. As fugitive hacker Aiden Pearce, your journey through a near-future, fully connected Chicago is defined more by the things you expect to do in this sort of game than by any surprising new features opened up by the tech.

Aside from the inevitable debt owed to Grand Theft Auto - over 10 years on from GTA 3, we're still carjacking and stunt-jumping around virtual cities - the echoes of other games are loud. The way Aiden jogs and clambers as he navigates back alleys and rooftops, with you holding down the shoulder button to seamlessly vault and climb, is reminiscent of Assassin's Creed, for example - though without that game's nimble verticality and vertiginous parkour.

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If you've read our freshly published Watch Dogs review then you'll know the game is another huge Ubisoft open-world adventure which, as usual, has been stuffed to the rafters with things to see and do.

Watch Dogs' unveiling at E3 2012 lives fondly in the memory for two reasons. Firstly because it was one of our earliest looks at a real next-generation console title, flaunting a calibre of lighting, physics and effects in a sandbox world that trumped any PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 reveals that year. Secondly, it was announced for no console in particular at the time, with Sony and Microsoft still stubbornly quiet about their new hardware plans. Having sparked off the next-gen discussion two years ago, though, does the final game deliver the explosive excitement we were promised? We've been playing the finished article on PlayStation 4 to find out.

Hi Eurogamers, and welcome to a selection of the video offerings from Outside Xbox this week - a week in which we have been preoccupied with the esoteric art of hacking.

Ubisoft has confirmed the resolution and frames per second for upcoming open world game Watch Dogs.

The PlayStation 4 version runs at 900p resolution. The Xbox One version runs at 792p resolution. Both output at 30 frames per second.

In a Ubisoft blog post, Watch Dogs creative chief Jonathan Morin said it was more important for Watch Dogs to deliver "an amazing next-gen experience" than a 1080p resolution.

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Ubisoft has a penchant for including Easter eggs in its games that reference some of its other famous franchises - but last week the company went a step further and snuck a couple of cheeky hidden objects in a new trailer for Watch Dogs.

UPDATE 13/05/2014 12.06am: Sony's listing for Watch Dogs has since omitted the line about it running in 1080p at 60fps.

Ubisoft has detailed the content included in Watch Dogs' upcoming season pass - the bulk of which is a new side-campaign featuring side-character T-Bone.

Watch Dogs developer Ubisoft has teamed up with Nvidia to offer free a PC copy of the game to anyone who upgrades their graphics card.

There's something about Watch Dogs' recent graphics debate that goes beyond skin deep. Games evolve between conception, unveiling and release - and after a five-year development it should be no surprise that things have changed. It sounds like there's now good news in the graphics department, but it remains to be seen whether the vocal minority that felt disappointed will have been won back. It wasn't simply that the game might look worse - rightly or wrongly, those players felt Ubisoft had cheated on a key part of the vision sold back at Watch Dogs' E3 2012 unveiling.

Years in the making and after millions in budget, its unlikely that Ubisoft sees Watch Dogs as a stand-alone affair.

Ubisoft has created a sprawling and dense virtual city in Watch Dogs - sometimes perhaps too bloated with things to be distracted by - but in recent weeks the debate around the game has ignored the game's content to instead focus on the matter of its looks.

The much-delayed Wii U version of Watch Dogs will arrive this autumn, according to a now-removed listing on Ubisoft's web store.

Ubisoft has released a new video showing off the PC version of open-world action game Watch Dogs.

Buy the Watch Dogs season pass and you'll get a new playable character and mini-campaign full of missions, a product listing has revealed.

UPDATE: Want to make your PC run Watch Dogs so it looks like the latest trailer? You'll need the game running close to its Ultra settings, which have now been detailed by creative director Jonathan Morin.

UPDATE 31/03/2014: The recently-released Watch Dogs Welcome to Chicago trailer contains footage captured from the PlayStation 4 version of the game, Ubisoft Montreal has revealed.

"Just to clarify: Our "Welcome to Chicago" trailer is indeed PS4 Devkit footage. I know this was a popular question so there you go :)," Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin confirmed on Twitter.

Elsewhere, Morin was again asked about the game's 2012 E3 reveal footage, which many consider to be of a higher graphical quality than footage subsequently released.

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Every game needs its rival factions, its Assassins and Templars, and Watch Dogs is no different. It has DeadSec - the group of tattooed hackers who help hero Aiden Pearce, and Blume - the security company whose technology runs the connected city of Chicago.

Ubisoft has detailed its exclusive content for Watch Dogs on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

Those playing on Sony platforms will get an extra hour of gameplay, split up into four missions, which will delve further into the world of hacker organisation DeadSec.

PS3 and PS4 gamers will also get an exclusive outfit and a hacker boost, which enables an extra battery slot on your mobile - the rechargable meter which regulates your use of hacking powers.

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The themes of security and hacking have been hot topics in recent months - something which unsurprisingly hadn't escaped Ubisoft's notice when we became the 900th person to mention the word "NSA" in their presence.

The average player who spends a bit of time free roaming takes 35 to 40 hours to complete Ubisoft's open world hacking game Watch Dogs, creative director Jonathan Morin said on Twitter.

Open Watch Dog's world map and what will you find? I see a city divided into districts, around half a dozen in number. Each has a central control point to capture, to unlock a surrounding sea of icons - side-missions, mini-games, collectibles. So it is in Assassin's Creed, so it is in Far Cry and so it is in Watch Dogs too.

Ubisoft Montreal has announced the minimum specifications for the PC version of open world hacking game Watch Dogs.

Creative director Jonathan Morin revealed the specs on Twitter. They are as follows:

Meanwhile, there was a bit of a kerfuffle following last week's re-unveiling of Watch Dogs. The recently released trailer, below, was picked apart and compared to footage shown when the game was announced at E3 2012, below the below. The upshot: Watch Dogs now does not look as good as Watch Dogs then.

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Ubisoft will hold a closed beta test for Watch Dogs, its upcoming sci-fi open world set to launch on 27th May.

That's according to reports from people who spotted a now-removed Xbox One beta client for the game on the Xbox Games Store.

No release date for the beta was mentioned, or a method for registering interest.

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This week we visited the offices of Ubisoft Montreal - ostensibly to find out more about Watch Dogs, but also for a brief tour of one of the largest gaming studios in the world.

Four months have passed since Watch Dogs' initial launch date and still the game isn't on shop shelves. But - as announced earlier today - Ubisoft's tech-savvy open world is now, finally, coming. Just two more months remain until its marathon five-year development draws to a close.

UPDATE: Ubisoft has announced the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions of Watch Dogs include exclusive DLC.

Those who buy either of the PlayStation versions get access to 60 minutes of additional gameplay which can be downloaded via the PlayStation Network.

"We're really excited for the launch of Watch Dogs on both PS3 and PS4 and are confident that it will prove to be one of the standout games of 2014,” said Michael Pattison, vice president of Third Party Relations at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

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Ubisoft has confirmed that the Wii U version of Watch Dogs will not arrive when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One at some point between 1st April and 30th June.

Ubisoft still plans to release a Wii U version of its open-world adventure Watch Dogs, a product schedule released by the company today indicates.

We've had our say already, and typically we were probably well wide of the mark, so it's now your turn to let us know what games you're looking forward to over the next 12 months. Thanks to all who voted (but no thanks to whoever suggested Pong, and to the handful of people who put forward Half-Life 3, well... I'm sorry). The top 10 are presented in reverse order below - and it was incredibly tight out at the front, with the top result beating out the runner-up by only a couple of votes. We've also included some of your comments, although since the submission form was anonymous we can't say exactly who made which point. Sorry about that - if you feel particularly proprietorial about one of your insights that we've highlighted, tell the world in the comments. Onward!

UPDATE: Ubisoft's PlayStation-exclusive levels for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will not be released on other platforms after all, the publisher has confirmed to Eurogamer.

A US trailer for the game last week revealed that the content was a timed exclusive for six months, suggesting a release on other platforms at a later date was possible.

Ubisoft has now confirmed that this will not be the case, and that Black Flag's hour of Aveline levels will remain exclusive to PlayStation 3 and PS4.

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Yet more proof this week, if more proof were needed, that the next generation does not start when Sony says it does. Or when Microsoft says it does, for that matter. The last-minute delay until spring 2014 of Watch Dogs, Ubisoft's post-internet open-world 1984-'em-up, was met with a certain amount of shock and no small degree of disappointment. Once that wore off, however, the greater concern was what we are going to play on next-gen consoles instead.

Deep down I always try to be optimistic about sequels, even though I probably make all the same jokes about them as everyone else, but I'm really struggling to get worked up about Killzone: Shadow Fall or Killer Instinct. There's Dead Rising 3, the latest in an unpredictable series with strong pedigree, but given Capcom's run of form at the moment, I half expect to burn through that and throw "out of ten" on the end without interrupting my gait.

OK then, maybe I am not as optimistic about sequels as I claim (although that really was a joke - I'm sure Dead Rising 3 will be, you know, transcendent), but besides new instalments in proven series like Battlefield, FIFA and Forza Motorsport that will sustain a few of us, Watch Dogs' delay means there's a lot resting on the shoulders of Mark Cerny's Knack and Crytek's Russell Crowe QTE extravaganza for those of us seeking new experiences. At least there's ResoGun and Crimson Dragon.

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UPDATE: Amazon and GameStop have both confirmed that they will offer those who've pre-ordered the Watch Dogs PS4 bundle the option to receive just a PS4 instead upon the console's launch next month.

Watch Dogs creative director Jonathan Morin has compared the game's fictional version of Chicago to Rockstar's chart-storming epic Grand Theft Auto 5.

Today I'm very pleased to be able to reveal the full and final line-up of developer sessions for this year's Eurogamer Expo - and the good news is that even if you can't make it to the show, you can watch them all live on the Eurogamer YouTube channel.

Uplay, Ubisoft's digital platform, has been confirmed for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Uplay will be available on all the titles in Ubisoft's next-generation lineup, which includes Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, The Crew, The Division and Watch Dogs.

Also set for next-gen consoles are the recently announced Child of Light, Valiant Hearts and Trials Fusion.

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Ubisoft has released a new 14 minute developer walkthrough for its highly anticipated open-world hacking adventure Watch Dogs.

Ubisoft has announced a movie version of upcoming open-world adventure Watch Dogs.

No release date or casting information has yet been unveiled. The sci-fi shooter is due to be released in video game form this November.

Little has been revealed of Watch Dogs overall plotline by Ubisoft and there's no mention of whether the film version will follow the same story.

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New footage has emerged from Ubisoft's highly-anticipated open-world cyberpunk adventure Watch Dogs that shows off a cameo by actress and comedian Aisha Tyler.

Eye-catching PlayStation 4 and Xbox One open-world game The Division will launch towards the end of 2014, Ubisoft has said.

The game's release window was narrowed by Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot during an investor call last night.

The Crew, a co-production between Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections, is nearer release. Ubisoft expects it to launch during Q1 2014 - so, by April next year.

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At E3 2012, Watch Dogs kickstarted the next generation of gaming long before the PS4 or Xbox One had even been announced, joining Star Wars 1313 as one of the defining moments of the show. A short gameplay walkthrough demonstrated a highly detailed world with a slew of impressive visual effects, animation and physics work that added an extra level of realism not possible on current-gen console platforms.

The bombastic E3 show floor was packed with open-world games.

Fresh footage from Ubisoft's intriguing sci-fi open world Watch Dogs has shone new light on how its online gameplay will work.

Watch Dogs developer Ubisoft previously revealed to Eurogamer that other players will be able to enter your single-player campaign. Sometimes you'll know they're there. Sometimes you won't.

In the gameplay below, protagonist Aiden Pearce chases a player-controlled hacker with orders to kill him or stop his operation. Then the gameplay shifts to show the mission from another perspective - Pearce is now the hacker, merged into another player's world while they attempt to stop him.

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Microsoft's stunning U-turn on its controversial Xbox One policies has delighted gamers and retailers - but are developers and publishers just as happy?

At E3 last week, in a behind closed doors presentation called Xbox 101, Microsoft engineering manager Jeff Henshaw - not a member of the PR team, he points out - tells a small gathering of journalists that Xbox One's 300,000 server cloud gives the next-generation console a unique advantage.

Ubisoft's fancy pants Watch Dogs E3 trailer has leaked onto the internet ahead of the company's press conference.

The impressive CGI trailer, below, depicts a mission in the open world action game, and sees hacker Aiden Pearce infiltrate a high class club in order to expose a human trafficker.

It's not long before the action kicks in, with Pearce showing off his hand to hand combat skills against multiple goons. There's also a bit where he hacks into the Matrix to turn the building's sprinkler system on, which is obviously ripped off from Hackers. Pearce beats up some cops, too, after turning off the city's lights.

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Driver: San Francisco developer Ubisoft Reflections is reportedly working on a racing game called The Crew, according to The Examiner.

Ubisoft is offering 15 randomly chosen players the chance to have their identity immortalised as a pedestrian in its upcoming open-world adventure Watch Dogs.

Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed 4, two of 2013's most high profile releases, are coming to Microsoft's newly unveiled Xbox One.

They're heading up the six games that Ubisoft will be bringing to Microsoft's console as it readies up its next generation offerings.

"Our teams are using the innovations in connectivity, immersion and social gaming included in Xbox One to create original and memorable next-gen gaming experiences," Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot squeaked.

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It's early on in Ubisoft's new Watch Dogs demo that the action pauses and we see a static camera angle of a leafy Chicago junction. We're watching the game running in real-time on PlayStation 4, on a dev kit that's scurried away under personal guard as soon as the playthrough is finished.

UPDATE: Ubisoft has confirmed that Watch Dog's PS3-exclusive gameplay will also be available on PlayStation 4.

The additional content will be released post-launch as a digital download, the publisher told Eurogamer.

"We can confirm that customers who will purchase Watch Dogs on PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 will be able to download 60 minutes of additional gameplay via the PlayStation Network after the game's launch," a Ubisoft spokesperson said. "As of now, we have no more details to share."

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Open world sci-fi adventure Watch Dogs will arrive in the UK on 22nd November for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360.

The game will also be available "at the launch of PlayStation 4", whenever that releases in Europe, and is also "planned for other next generation consoles" (the next Xbox is apparently due in early November).

A fresh gameplay trailer below shows off new footage of protagonist Aiden Pearce running from the law, biking away from the law and running on top of a train away from the law.

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In July 2010, ahead of the release of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, one of the key developers behind the game told Eurogamer that the stealth action series needed a "breather".

Last night's PlayStation 4 unveiling included a flurry of new game announcements, and confirmation of the 60-odd games companies which are already signed up to support Sony's next-gen console.

Deep Down (working title) - Capcom

Destiny - Bungie

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"I'm not directly managing third-party relations," says Shuhei Yoshida, when I ask him a question that pretty much has nothing to do with the area of Sony Computer Entertainment for which he is responsible.

Update: Ubisoft has just confirmed that Watch Dogs is in fact coming to the Wii U. Previously it had only been rumoured via retailer listings.

Original story: Ubisoft founder Yves Guillemot confirmed at Sony's PlayStation Event today that Watch Dogs is in fact coming to PlayStation 4.

Creative director Jonathan Morin showed off a new gameplay trailer - below - that showed the trench coat and baseball cap wearing protagonist causing a ruckus. Evidently, Watch Dogs takes place in a Minority Report-esque future where your jail broken super-duper smartphone can tell you the probability that someone is about to commit a crime. Eavesdrop on a lovers' spat and when the s*** hits the fan you start chasing the perp-to-be before he can land a finger on the potential victim.

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Intriguing futuristic adventure Watch Dogs looks likely to be released on Wii U, a round of retailer activity suggests.

Open-world sci-fi adventure Watch Dogs will be out this Christmas for "all home consoles", leaked promotional material for the game suggests.

Sony and Microsoft might be happy with an extended console generation - but Ubisoft isn't.

A single brand new screenshot from Watch Dogs, Ubisoft's recently-announced near-future adventure, has made its way out into the wild.

Back at the start of January, we wrote of our hope that 2012 would bring us more Actual New Games. As much as we like stuff like Diablo 3 (when we can play it), we also want games that "invent new styles and genres", as I said at the time.

Ubisoft has grabbed a number of web URLs pertaining to a potential movie version of just-announced new action IP Watch Dogs.

It's a funny place we've found ourselves in at this year's E3 - if not necessarily stuck between a rock and a hard place then certainly trapped in an awkward twilight, having old tech repackaged and resold to us while we marvel at a future that's very much here amongst us, even if certain parties refuse to acknowledge it.

Ubisoft has picked the perfect time to take the wraps off Watch Dogs. In an E3 that's provided precious little in the way of innovation or excitement in the action adventure space, its brand new IP has been one of the few freshly announced titles to generate any palpable buzz on the showfloor.

However, under closer inspection in an invite-only broom cupboard tucked away in the publisher's booth, there's plenty of evidence to suggest Ubisoft Montreal's hugely ambitious open world adventure would have grabbed plenty of headlines even during a vintage year for LA's annual gaming expo.

For those who haven't pored over the demo footage shown during the publisher's press conference on Monday, here are the basics. Watch Dogs plays out in a near-future Chicago where all digital devices are linked by an enormous clandestine data network set up to allow private corporations access to every single scrap of data linked to an individual person.

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UPDATE: Ubisoft has since amended its official materials, confirming the game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

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